The market for high-efficiency products for use in the treatment of aqueous suspensions of particulate, solid, water-insoluble materials has become increasing acute in recent years. Industry and research are therefore continually searching for new systems which can be used to facilitate the dewatering of aqueous suspensions of organic, or mixtures of organic and inorganic, materials such as distillary wastes, fermentation wastes, wastes from paper manufacturing plants, dye plant wastes and sewage suspensions such as digested sludges, activated sludges or raw and primary sludges from sewage treatment plants etc.
The most recent and most successful materials used in the treatment of such suspensions have been amidine or, imidazoline polymers, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,406,139; 3,666,705; 3,450,646; 3,576,740. These polymers are very effective materials for use in the treatment of industrial wastes. The polymers are produced, however, by the treatment of corresponding nitrile polymers and are therefore governed in their structure by the structure of the nitrile polymers. Furthermore, conversion of the nitrile polymers to the imidazoline or amidine polymers does not reach 100% and therefore a portion of the resultant imidazoline or amidine polymer is nonfunctional in its water treating capacity.
Prior attempts to obviate these difficulties have included rearrangement of the groups present in the nitrile charge polymer and the attempted production of unsaturated imidazolines which may be homopolymerized or copolymerized into more active imidazoline polymers. However, attempts to produce intermediates, from which the unsaturated imidazolines may be prepared, have proven unsuccessful. Furthermore, attempts to follow the teachings of U.S. Pat. No. 3,210,371 resulted only in the production of polymers while the teachings of Oxley et al, Jour. Chem. Soc., 1947, pages 497-503 also resulted in the recovery of polymeric products.